Watched by belladet
Barbie, but for people who listen to FKA Twigs. Barbie, but instead of Speed Drive, they listen to Eusexua in the car. It is kind of like Barbie, but if you give Barbie the need to enact her catharsis violently. So, basically, all women.
I don’t remember when, but one night at home, my grandmother said something I had forgotten about until after leaving the theatre. We were sitting at the kitchen table, and I don’t remember the conversation, but she said she doesn’t wear makeup or do her hair anymore because “no one looks at her.”
Do I look at her?
When I was 14, my grandma took me out to lunch after picking me up from high school. We went to Burger Boy, a tiny diner a few blocks away, and sat at the counter to watch them flip our pancakes. Breakfast for lunch. I hadn’t eaten breakfast anyway. This was mid-divorce, so use that for context. She sat left of me, her loose leather purse placed between us on the sticky red countertop. She twisted her body to face mine. This was before she’d lost all her weight because of cancer. Before Po-Po had passed. This was before we’d even moved in with her. She looked at me with pity. Or maybe not; maybe that was just my teenage brain seeing undermined compassion where there wasn’t any.
She tells me that if I needed anything, anything Bella, that I can always call her. She’ll always be there for me, no matter what. She’ll never ask what happened. She’ll just be there. She wraps her loose arms around me and places her chin atop the crown of my head. I try not to cry.
We eat our food in silence, but not uncomfortably. Almost like the silence after you nearly get into a wreck, or the calm after a very serious, very concerning storm.
I never called her. It eats me up sometimes.
Moments like that ripple throughout my life. When I want to call someone, tell a girl on the street I like her outfit, ask for a boy's number, do something spontaneous. I go to prison every Sunday to lead a theatre workshop. Every Sunday at noon, an older woman waits to see her son, dressed in immaculate suits. Her hair’s perfectly curled, red lipstick and gold flats. Last year, when my friends and I first saw her, we couldn’t stop talking about how amazing she looked in the middle of a prison lobby. If you’ve never been to a prison before, you won’t understand, but there’s something amazingly liminal about standing as a free person in a place actively locking people away. Her beauty reflected on the cracked linoleum tiles filled me with hope. I dream her son was filled with double. I think about telling her she’s beautiful every time I see her, but I don’t. I don’t know why. She is beautiful to me. I wonder when she last heard it from a stranger—a younger woman.
Companies offer a million and one ways to stop wrinkles and hide gray hairs. You can only become successful when you're young; after 30, you’ve missed your chance. 30 is ancient, geriatric, paleolithic. 50 is death. I watch TikToks of tweens coating their faces in retinol because they heard it’s anti-aging. They look like babies playing dress-up and pull it off much better than I ever could. They are scarily convincing.
I live my youth with the constant fear that it has already ended. Always looking over my shoulder for the older me, as if I can spot her behind a lamppost or sitting on a park bench. As if I’d recognize her, and she’d recognize me for who I am and not everything she wished I’d been. I scour Pinterest and YouTube videos for the life I want, crafting aesthetically pleasing collages and mood boards as though I can step into my future anytime. I spend my whole life searching for the scraps of a truth I don’t even know exists. I’m a vulture with anger.
